Nature Communications (Mar 2021)

Quasi-continuous melting of model polymer monolayers prompts reinterpretation of polymer melting

  • Ruibin Zhang,
  • William S. Fall,
  • Kyle Wm. Hall,
  • Gillian A. Gehring,
  • Xiangbing Zeng,
  • Goran Ungar

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21799-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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Melting is considered a strictly first-order transition and therefore cannot proceed continuously. Here the authors challenge this concept for long-chain compounds by demonstrating continuous melting of thin layers on graphite where the barrier for such melting, the interface crowding, is removed.